REPRESENTATIVES
Of Writing

Philip B. Meggs 1942 (FLORENCE, SOUTH CAROLINA, USA) – 2002

The past, present, and future of graphic design could easily be chronicled in a purely visual manner, with an endless array of finished projects neatly and quickly labeled by designer, year, and client. End of the story. Luckily, graphic design has many stories to tell, with a rich past, fluctuating present, and unpredictable future shaped by its practitioners, technology, and world events. It benefits from the considered interpretation of an ever-growing group of wordsmiths who give a critical, analytical, and contextual framework within which to chronicle the profession and further its understanding within and outside of the field.

Detail of TYPOGRAPHY NOW TWO: IMPLOSION, Rick Poynor / Booth-Clibborn Editions / design, Jonathan Barnbrook / UK, 1996

Philip B. Meggs
1942 (FLORENCE, SOUTH CAROLINA, USA) – 2002

Most widely known for his writing and teachings, Philip B. Meggs was first an accomplished designer, having worked in the 1960s as a senior designer for Reynolds Aluminum and then as art director of A.H. Robins Pharmaceuticals, where he designed posters, brochures, packaging, and annual reports. In 1968 he joined the faculty of the Communication Arts and Design Department at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU); he was appointed chair of the program in 1974 and stayed in that role, overseeing the growth in enrollment and prestige of the program, until 1987. In 1983—stemming from research for his classes, including a course in the history of visual communications—he published A History of Graphic Design, which paved the way for design history. Meggs became an avid writer, publishing a dozen books and more than 150 articles; he also wrote the comprehensive “Graphic Design” entry for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Meggs passed away in 2002.

TYPE AND IMAGE: THE LANGUAGE OF GRAPHIC DESIGN, Philip B. Meggs / John Wiley & Sons / USA, 1992

TYPOGRAPHIC SPECIMENS: THE GREAT TYPEFACES, Philip B. Meggs, Rob Carter / John Wiley & Sons / USA, 1993

A HISTORY OF GRAPHIC DESIGN, Philip B. Meggs, Alston W. Purvis / John Wiley & Sons / USA, 2006 (4th ed.)

TYPOGRAPHIC DESIGN: FORM AND COMMUNICATION, Rob Carter, Ben Day, Philip B. Meggs / John Wiley & Sons / USA, 2007 (4th ed.)

Richard Hollis
b. 1934 (LONDON, ENGLAND, UK) CURRENTLY LONDON, ENGLAND, UK

As an educator, Richard Hollis taught lithography and design at London College of Printing and Chelsea School of Art in the early 1960s, and he co-founded, with Norman Potter, a new school of design at West of England College of Art, where he headed the department from 1964 to 1967 and is still a regular lecturer. As a graphic designer, Hollis has produced a substantial body of work that early on reflected his interest in Swiss designers. And as a writer, he has written—and designed, showcasing the advantages of being a designer-as-author—two formative books: Graphic Design: A Concise History, which chronicles the characters and events that shaped twentieth-century design, and Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and Growth of an International Style, 1920–1965, one of the most complete books on this influential group of designers that benefits from Hollis’s firsthand experiences and interactions with them.

GRAPHIC DESIGN: A CONCISE HISTORY, Richard Hollis / Thames & Hudson / design, Richard Hollis / UK, 2001 (2nd ed.)

SWISS GRAPHIC DESIGN: THE ORIGINS AND GROWTH OF AN INTERNATIONAL STYLE, 1920–1965, Richard Hollis / Laurence King Publishing; Yale University Press / UK, 2006

Rick Poynor
b. 1957 (HORLEY, ENGLAND, UK) CURRENTLY LONDON, ENGLAND, UK

Having studied history of art at Manchester University and earned a master of philosophy in design history from London’s Royal College of Art › 135, Rick Poynor has become one of graphic design’s most ardent critics. His writing has been widely available in the pages of Eye › 103, the magazine he founded in 1990 and edited until 1997, as well as in his regular “Observer” column in Print › 94 and his essays in Design Observer › 113, the blog he co-founded in 2003. Poynor has published a select range of books that revel in lightly trodden subjects like No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism, a monograph on Dutch designer Jan Van Toorn, and a full account of Herbert Spencer’s Typographica › 95 magazine. Outside of writing, Poynor was a co-organizer of the “First Things First 2000” › 48 manifesto in 1999 and curator of Communicate: Independent British Graphic Design Since the Sixties at the Barbican Art Gallery in London in 2004.

DESIGN WITHOUT BOUNDARIES: VISUAL COMMUNICATION IN TRANSITION, Rick Poynor / Booth-Clibborn Editions / design, Stephen Coates; image, Richard J. Burbridge / UK, 1998

DESIGNING PORNOTOPIA: TRAVELS IN VISUAL CULTURE, Rick Poynor / Laurence King Publishing; Princeton Architectural Press / design, Nick Bell; image, Ken Leung / UK; USA, 2006

JAN VAN TOORN: CRITICAL PRACTICE, Rick Poynor / 010 Publishers / design, Simon Davies; based on a design by Jan van Toorn / Netherlands, 2008

NO MORE RULES: GRAPHIC DESIGN AND POSTMODERNISM, Rick Poynor / Laurence King Publishing; Yale University Press / design, Chip Kidd / UK; USA, 2003

OBEY THE GIANT: LIFE IN THE IMAGE WORLD, Rick Poynor / August Media; Birkhäuser / design, Stephen Coates; image, Kam Tang / UK; Switzerland, 2001

TYPOGRAPHICA, Rick Poynor / Laurence King Publishing; Princeton Architectural Press / design, Stephen Coates; based on a design by Herbert Spencer / UK; USA, 2001

Max Bruinsma
b. 1956 (NETHERLANDS) CURRENTLY AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS

Since 1985, Max Bruinsma, a design critic, editor, curator, and editorial designer—although not a practicing designer, he works with the convergence of design and writing, noting that “our common job is to organize interfaces between content and form”—has been writing about design and culture for Dutch and international publications. From 1997 to 1999 he was Rick Poynor’s successor as editor-in-chief of Eye › 103 magazine, where he explored his interest in the fledgling field of screen-based media. For five years prior to Eye he was editor-in-chief of Items, the Dutch review of design; he now holds that position once again. In 2005, Bruinsma established a new editorial design program at the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design. He has been lecturing and leading workshops since the early 1990s.

ONLINE ARCHIVE OF WRITINGS BY MAX BRUINSMA / Netherlands, 2008

Steven Heller
b. 1950 (NEW YORK, NEW YORK, USA) CURRENTLY NEW YORK, NEW YORK, USA

You just blinked, and Steven Heller published another book on design—or so goes the running (and loving) joke among designers. Heller is the author, co-author, or editor of more than 100 books on design-related topics. He was born in 1950, and his professional life began early; at the age of 17 he became art director of the New York Free Press, and in the following seven years he held positions at unruly publications like Interview, Rock, and Screw. In 1974, he began a 33-year tenure at the New York Times, starting as art director of the Op-Ed section and eventually becoming senior art director of the New York Times Book Review.

HELLER’S IMPRESSIVE OUTPUT THROUGHOUT THE YEARS / Photo: Davies and Starr

Ralph Caplan
b. 1925 (AMBRIDGE, PENNSYLVANIA, USA) CURRENTLY NEW YORK, NEW YORK, USA

Involved with design since the late 1950s, when he was editor-in-chief of I.D. magazine › 96, Ralph Caplan has been a conspicuously entertaining, engaging, and informed writer and lecturer. In addition, he has been a member of the board of directors of the International Design Conference in Aspen, 1968 to 1997, and a co-director of several conferences. Caplan has written for, among many other publications, Communication Arts › 96, Design Quarterly, Graphis, Print › 94, and U&lc › 98 as well as mainstream periodicals like Consumer Reports, House Beautiful, the New York Times, and the New Yorker. In 1982, he published By Design: Why There Are No Locks on the Bathroom Doors of the Hotel Louis XIV and Other Object Lessons, an industry-beloved discussion of the intersection of design and society. An anthology of Caplan’s writing, Cracking the Whip, was published in 2005 and includes 60 essays dating to 1960; fresh writings can be found in his online column, “Noah’s Archives,” for VOICE: AIGA Journal of Design › 113.

THE DESIGN OF HERMAN MILLER, Ralph Caplan / Watson-Guptill / USA, 1976

WRITINGS BY RALPH CAPLAN FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGN/I.D. MAGAZINE

ATTENTION, CONNECTION, TENSION, AND OMISSION, IN-HOUSE PUBLICATIONS BY HERMAN MILLER INCORPORATED / writing, Ralph Caplan; design, John Massey / USA, 1978

EDITORIAL SAMPLING OF RALPH CAPLAN’S WORK / Photos: Lee Iley, 2008

In 1998 he co-founded, with Lita Talarico, the MFA Designer as Author › 132 program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, which they have co-chaired since. Heller also co-founded, with Alice Twemlow › 241, the MFA in design criticism at the same school. And he is an indefatigable design writer and editor. He is an ongoing contributor to Print, Eye, Baseline, and I.D. magazines; he was the editor of the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design › 105 from 1988 to 2000, and is now the editor of its online edition, VOICE: AIGA Journal of Design › 113; and, from time to time, writes obituaries for the New York Times. He also manages to find time to curate exhibitions and conferences and to lecture around the world. Famously, his days start before dawn.

Lewis Blackwell
b. 1958 (LONDON, ENGLAND, UK) CURRENTLY LONDON, ENGLAND, UK

Collaborating with designers like David Carson › 186, Neville Brody, Jeremy Leslie, Ed Fella › 185, and Laurie Haycock Makela and P. Scott Makela, Lewis Blackwell has generated a rather diverse collection of books—The End of Print, G1: New Dimensions in Graphic Design, Issues: New Magazine Design, Edward Fella: Letters on America, and Whereishere, respectively. Twentieth-Century Type, Blackwell’s comprehensive narrative of the development of typography, has seen three editions and translation into seven languages since it was first published in 1992; it remains an authoritative source. Apart from writing books, Blackwell was editor-in-chief of Creative Review › 99 from 1995 to 1999, and for the next eight years he worked as creative director of Getty Images, rising to senior vice president as he helped the image company embolden its own. Blackwell now engages in strategic advisory roles while concentrating on new creative and writing work.

20TH CENTURY TYPE, Lewis Blackwell / Laurence King Publishing / Pentagram; Angus Hyland / UK, 1998 (2nd ed.)

G1: NEW DIMENSIONS IN GRAPHIC DESIGN, Lewis Blackwell, Neville Brody / Rizzoli International Publications, Laurence King Publishing / 1997

THE END OF PRINT: THE GRAPHIC DESIGN OF DAVID CARSON, Lewis Blackwell, David Carson / Chronicle Books, Laurence King Publishing / USA, 1995

TIPOGRAFÍA DEL SIGLO XX: REMIX, Lewis Blackwell / Gustavo Gili / Carlos Sáez de Valicourt based on the design by Angus Hyland / Spain, 1998

WHEREISHERE, Lewis Blackwell, P. Scott Makela, Laurie Haycock Makela / Gynko Press Inc. / P. Scott Makela, Laurie Haycock Makela; Warren Corbit, Kurt Miller/ USA, 1998

Ellen Lupton
b. 1963 (PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, USA) CURRENTLY BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, USA

Upon graduation from Cooper Union › 131 in 1985, Ellen Lupton established—with Abbott Miller (the two later married)—a design studio called Design Writing Research. This is a catchy name, certainly, and the title of their joint 1996 book; more significantly, it indicates the symbiosis of these elements in Lupton’s career. From 1985 to 1992 she was curator of the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography › 124 at Cooper Union, where she organized exhibitions and wrote their accompanying catalogs and publications, and since 1992 she has been curator of contemporary design at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum › 120, where exhibits like Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines, from Home to Office, Mixing Messages: Graphic Design in Contemporary Culture, Skin: Surface, Substance, and Design, and the National Design Triennial series resulted in must-have books.

Recent books by Lupton are broader in subject and aim to widen the appeal and accessibility of design: Thinking with Type is an authoritative primer on typography; D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself, cowritten with her students at the graduate program at Maryland Institute College of Art › 134 in Baltimore, embraces the do-it-yourself attitude that permeates culture; and its spin-off, D.I.Y.: Kids, cowritten with her twin sister, Julia Lupton, encourages the early adoption of this approach. Since the late 1980s, Lupton has been writing essays and conducting interviews for almost every conceivable design publication: Print, AIGA Journal of Graphic Design, I.D., Eye, Gr a phi c Design USA, Graphis, Dwell, and Metropolis. This canon of writing forms a critical and engaging view of both the history and the present of the profession as well as its theory and practice.

D.I.Y.: DESIGN IT YOURSELF, edited by Ellen Lupton / Princeton Architectural Press / Maryland Institute College of Art: cover design, Mike Weikert, Nancy Froehlich, Kristen Spilman; inside covers, Kristen Spilman; photography, Nancy Froehlich, Dan Meyers / USA, 2006

THINKING WITH TYPE: A CRITICAL GUIDE FOR DESIGNERS, WRITERS, EDITORS, AND STUDENTS, Ellen Lupton / Princeton Architectural Press / cover design, Ellen Lupton, Jennifer Tobias; design assistance, Eric Karnes, Elke Gasselseder; photography, Dan Meyers / USA, 2004

D.I.Y.: KIDS, Ellen Lupton, Julia Lupton / Princeton Architectural Press / USA, 2007

THE BATHROOM, THE KITCHEN, AND THE AESTHETICS OF WASTE, Ellen Lupton, Abbott Miller / Princeton Architectural Press / USA, 1996

SKIN: SURFACE, SUBSTANCE, AND DESIGN, Ellen Lupton / Princeton Architectural Press, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum / Ellen Lupton / USA, 2007

MECHANICAL BRIDES: WOMEN AND MACHINES FROM HOME TO OFFICE, Ellen Lupton / Princeton Architectural Press, Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum / Ellen Lupton, Hall Smyth; cover design, Abbott Miller, Hall Smyth / USA, 1996

THE ABCS OF BAUHAUS: THE BAUHAUS AND DESIGN THEORY, Ellen Lupton, Abbott Miller / Princeton Architectural Press / USA, 2000

DESIGN WRITING RESEARCH, Ellen Lupton / Kiosk / USA, 1996

Alice Rawsthorn
b. 1958 (MANCHESTER, ENGLAND, UK) CURRENTLY LONDON, ENGLAND, UK

With a degree in art and architecture history, Alice Rawsthorn was a journalist at the Financial Times for 16 years, working as a foreign correspondent in Paris and covering the creative industries. In 2001, she was appointed director of the London Design Museum › 122, where, over the course of five years, she organized, among other things, significant exhibitions on the work of Peter Saville › 180, Saul Bass › 158, and Robert Brownjohn › 155. In 2006, the International Herald Tribune (IHT) introduced a weekly column simply titled “Design,” written by their newly minted design critic, Rawsthorn. In a 2008 column she asked a deceptively simple question: What is good design? To readers of this book and to other design practitioners, the answer may be evident, but to the readers of the 240,000 copies in circulation of the IHT and the 4.6 million unique users who visit its website, the eloquence and lucidity of Rawsthorn’s answer is vital. As complements, Rawsthorn has published a biography of Yves Saint-Laurent and a monograph on Marc Newson.

ALICE RAWSTHORN’S WEEKLY DESIGN COLUMN / International Herald Tribune / UK, 2008

THE PETER SAVILLE SHOW EXHIBITION POSTER FOR THE DESIGN MUSEUM / Graphic Thought Facility / UK, 2004

DESIGN MUSEUM IDENTITY / Graphic Thought Facility / UK, 2003

Alice Twemlow
b. 1973 (LONDON, ENGLAND, UK) CURRENTLY BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, USA

As a devoted design critic whose writing is accessible, entertaining, and informative, Alice Twemlow has written for many of the industry’s publications, including Eye, Print, STEP inside design, I.D., and Baseline, and is a contributing writer for Design Observer. Twemlow holds a masters degree in history of design from a joint program between the Victoria and Albert Museum › 122 and the Royal College of Art in London, where she is also working on her doctorate in design criticism. From 1998 to 2002, she was the program director for the AIGA › 244, where she directed conferences like “Voice,” AIGA’s 2002 National Design Conference 2002, and “Looking Closer,” a conference on design history and criticism. In 2008, she began chairing the groundbreaking MFA Design Criticism Department—more colloquially known as D-Crit—at the School of Visual Arts › 132, co-founded with Steven Heller › 238.

THE DECRIMINALIZATION OF ORNAMENT /Eye / design, Esterson Associates / UK, April 2004

AIGA VOICE CONFERENCE LOGO / design, AdamsMorioka / USA, 2001

WHAT IS GRAPHIC DESIGN FOR? Alice Twemlow / RotoVision / art direction, Tony Seddon; design, Jane Waterhouse / UK, 2006

SCHOOL OF VISUAL ARTS MFA IN DESIGN CRITICISM ADVERTISEMENT / design, Walker Art Center / USA, 2007